sdr comments on Open thread for December 17-23, 2013 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: ciphergoth 17 December 2013 08:45PM

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Comment author: DisclosureQuestion 17 December 2013 08:49:34PM 9 points [-]

I'm not ready for my current employer to know about this, so I've created a throwaway account to ask about it.

A week ago I interviewed with Google, and I just got the feedback: they're very happy and want to move forward. They've sent me an email asking for various details, including my current salary.

Now it seems to me very much as if I don't want to tell them my current salary - I suspect I'd do much better if they worked out what they felt I was worth to them and offered me that, rather than taking my current salary and adding a bit extra. The Internet is full of advice that you shouldn't tell a prospective employer your current salary when they ask. But I'm suspicious of this advice - it seems like the sort of thing they would say whether it was true or not. What's your guess - in real life, how offputting is it for an employer if a candidate refuses to disclose that kind of detail when you ask for it as part of your process? How likely are Google to be put off by it?

Comment author: sdr 17 December 2013 10:54:51PM *  6 points [-]

The rationale behind salary negotiations are best expanded upon by patio11's "Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued" (that article's well worth the rent).

In real life, the sort of places where employers take offense by you not disclosing current salary (or generally, by salary negotiations -that is, they'd hire someone else if he's available more cheaply) are not the places you want to work with: if they're putting selection pressure for downscaling salaries, all your future coworkers are going to be, well, cheap.

This is anecdotally not true for Google; they can afford truckloads, if they really want to have you onboard. So this is much more likely to come from standardized processes. Also note in Google's case, that decisions are delegated to a board of stakeholders, so there isn't really one person who can be put off due to salary (and they probably handle the hire/no hire decisions entirely separate to the salary negotiations).

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 18 December 2013 10:39:09AM *  1 point [-]

if they're putting selection pressure for downscaling salaries, all your future coworkers are going to be, well, cheap.

Also, the company will probably be less likely to buy you a decent computer for work, install a new server when your department needs it, or hire new people when there is more work than you can handle. Even if you somehow don't care about money for yourself, you probably do at least care about having decent working conditions. Maybe the just-world hypothesis makes you believe that lower salary will somehow be balanced by better working conditions, but it's probably the other way round.